Behind That Curtain

by Earl Der Biggers

  “You know, I venture to presume, the meaning of the character inscribed on velvet?” Chan inquired.

  “Yes,” said Sir Frederic. “Not any too appropriate, in this case, I believe. I was told it signifies ‘Long life and happiness.’”

  “Precisely.” Chan turned the slipper slowly in his hand. “There exist one hundred and one varieties of this character—one hundred for the people, one reserved for the Emperor. A charming gift. The footwear of a mandarin, fitting only for one high-placed and wealthy.”

  “Well, they were on Hilary Galt’s feet when we found him, murdered on the floor,” Sir Frederic said. “‘Walk softly, my best of friends’—that was what the Chinese minister wrote in the letter he sent with them. Hilary Galt was walking softly that night—but he never walked again.” The Englishman took the slippers. “By the way—I hesitate to ask it—but I’d rather you didn’t mention this matter tonight at dinner.”

  “Why, of course,” remarked the girl, surprised.

  “And that affair of Eve Durand. Ah—er—I fear I was a little indiscreet this noon. Now that I’m no longer at the Yard, I allow myself too much rope. You understand, Sergeant?”

  Chan’s little eyes were on him with a keenness that made Sir Frederic slightly uncomfortable. “Getting immodest for a minute,” the Chinese said. “I am A-1 honor student in school of discretion.”

  “I’m sure of that,” the great man smiled.

  “No impulse to mention these matters would assail me, I am certain,” Chan went on. “You bright man, Sir Frederic—you know Chinese are psychic people.”

  “Really?”

  “Undubitably. Something has told me—”

  “Ah yes—we needn’t go into that,” Sir Frederic put in hastily. “I have a moment’s business in the offices below. If you will excuse me—”

  He disappeared with the slippers into his room. Miss Morrow turned in amazement to Kirk.

  “What in the world did he mean? Surely Eve Durand—”

  “Mr. Chan is psychic,” Kirk suggested. “Maybe he can explain it.”

  Chan grinned. “Sometimes psychic feelings lead positively nowhere,” he remarked.

  Paradise escorted two more guests through the outer hall into the living-room. A little, bird-like woman was on tiptoe, kissing Barry Kirk.

  “Barry, you bad boy. I haven’t seen you for ages. Don’t tell me you’ve forgot your poor old grandmother.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” he laughed.

  “Not while I have my health and strength,” she returned. She came toward the fireplace. “How cozy you are—”

  “Grandmother—this is Miss Morrow,” Kirk said. “Mrs. Dawson Kirk.”

  The old lady took both the girl’s hands. “My dear, I’m happy to know you—”

  “Miss Morrow is a lawyer,” Kirk added.

  “Lawyer fiddlesticks,” his grandmother cried. “She couldn’t be—and look like this.”

  “Just what I said,” nodded Kirk.

  The old lady regarded the girl for a brief moment. “Youth and beauty,” she remarked. “If I had those, my child, I wouldn’t waste time over musty law books.” She turned toward Chan. “And this is—”

  “Sergeant Chan, of the Honolulu police,” Kirk told her.

  The old lady gave Charlie a surprisingly warm handclasp. “Know all about you,” she said. “I like you very much.”

  “Flattered and overwhelmed,” gasped Chan.

  “Needn’t be,” she answered.

  The woman who had accompanied Mrs. Kirk stood rather neglected in the background. Kirk hurried forward to present her. She was, it seemed, Mrs. Tupper-Brock, Mrs. Kirk’s secretary and companion. Her manner was cold and distant. Chan gave her a penetrating look and then bowed low before her.

  “Paradise will show you into one of the guest rooms,” said Kirk to the women. “You’ll find a pair of military brushes and every book on football Walter Camp ever wrote. If there’s anything else you want, try and get it.”

  They followed the butler out. The bell rang, and going to the door himself, Kirk admitted another couple. Mr. Carrick Enderby, who was employed in the San Francisco office of Thomas Cook and Sons, was a big, slow, blond man with a monocle and nothing much behind it. All the family brilliance seemed to be monopolized by his wife, Eileen, a dark, dashing woman of thirty-five or so, who came in breezily. She joined the women, and the three men stood in the ill-at-ease silence that marks a dinner party in its initial stages.

  “We’re in for a bit of fog, I fancy,” Enderby drawled.

  “No doubt of it,” Kirk answered.

  When the women reappeared, Mrs. Dawson Kirk came at once to Chan’s side.

  “Sally Jordan of Honolulu is an old friend of mine,” she told him. “A very good friend. We’re both living beyond our time, and there’s nothing cements friendship like that. I believe you were once—er—attached—”

  Chan bowed. “One of the great honors of my poor life. I was her house-boy, and memories of her kindness will survive while life hangs out.”

  “Well, she told me how you repaid that kindness recently. A thousand-fold, she put it.”

  Chan shrugged. “My old employer has only one weakness. She exaggerates stupendously.”

  “Oh, don’t be modest,” said Mrs. Kirk. “Gone out of fashion, long ago. These young people will accuse you of something terrible if you try that tune. However, I like you for it.”

  A diversion at the door interrupted her. Colonel John Beetham entered the living-room. John Beetham the explorer, whose feet had stood in many dark and lonely places, who knew Tibet and Turkestan, Tsaidam and southern Mongolia. He had lived a year in a house-boat on the largest river in the heart of Asia, had survived two heartbreaking, death-strewn retreats across the snowy plateau of Tibet, had walked amid the ruins of ancient desert cities that had flourished long before Christ was born.

  For once, here was a man who looked the part. Lean, tall, bronzed, there was a living flame in his gray eyes. But like Charlie Chan, he came of a modest race, and his manner was shy and aloof as he acknowledged the introductions.

  “So glad,” he muttered. “So glad.” A mere formula.

  Suddenly Sir Frederic Bruce was again in the room. He seized Colonel Beetham’s hand.

  “I met you several years ago,” he said. “You wouldn’t recall it. You were the lion of the hour, and I a humble spectator. I was present at the dinner of the Royal Geographical Society in London when they gave you that enormous gold doodad—the Founders’ Medal—wasn’t that it?”

  “Ah yes—of course. To be sure,” murmured Colonel Beetham.

  His eyes bright as buttons in the subdued light, Charlie Chan watched Sir Frederic being presented to the ladies—to Mrs. Tupper-Brock and Eileen Enderby. Paradise arrived with something on a tray.

  “All here except Miss Garland,” Kirk announced. “We’ll wait just a moment.” The bell rang, and he motioned to his servant that he would go.

  When Kirk returned, he was accompanied by a handsome woman whose face was flushed and who carried some burden in her jeweled hands. She hurried to a table, and deposited there a number of loose pearls.

  “I had the most ridiculous accident on the stairs,” she explained. “The string of my necklace broke, and I simply shed pearls right and left. I do hope I haven’t lost any.”

  One of the pearls rolled to the floor, and Kirk retrieved it. The woman began counting them off into a gold mesh handbag. Finally she stopped.

  “Got them all?” Barry Kirk inquired.

  “I—I think so. I never can remember the number. And now—you really must forgive my silly entrance. It would be rather effective on the stage, I fancy, but I’m not on the stage now. In real life, I’m afraid it was rather rude.”

  Paradise took her cloak, and Kirk introduced her. Charlie Chan studied her long and carefully. She was no longer young, but her beauty was still triumphant. It would have to be, for her profession was the stage, and she was well-beloved in
the Australian theaters.

  At the table, Charlie found himself at Mrs. Kirk’s right, with June Morrow on his other side. If he was a bit awed by the company in which he had landed, he gave no sign. He listened to several anecdotes of Sally Jordan’s past from Mrs. Kirk, then turned to the girl beside him. Her eyes were shining.

  “I’m thrilled to the depths,” she whispered. “Sir Frederic and that marvelous Beetham man all in one evening—and you, too.”

  Chan smiled. “I am pretty lonely fly in this menagerie of lions,” he admitted.

  “Tell me—that about being psychic. You don’t really think Sir Frederic has found Eve Durand?”

  Chan shrugged. “For one word a man may be adjudged wise, and for one word he may be adjudged foolish.”

  “Oh, please don’t be so Oriental. Just think—Eve Durand may be at this table to-night.”

  “Strange events permit themselves the luxury of occurring,” Chan conceded. His eyes traveled slowly about the board; they rested on Mrs. Tupper-Brock silent and aloof, on the vivacious Eileen Enderby, longest of all on the handsome Gloria Garland, now completely recovered from her excitement over the scattered pearls.

  “Tell me, Sir Frederic,” remarked Mrs. Kirk. “How are you making out here in Barry’s womanless Eden?”

  “Splendidly,” smiled the detective. “Mr. Kirk has been very kind. I not only have the run of this charming bungalow, but he has also installed me in the offices below.” He looked at Kirk. “Which reminds me—I’m afraid I quite forgot to close the safe downstairs.”

  “Paradise can attend to it,” suggested Kirk.

  “Oh, no,” said Sir Frederic. “Please don’t trouble. It doesn’t matter—as far as I am concerned.”

  Carrick Enderby spoke in a loud, booming voice. “I say, Colonel Beetham. I’ve just read your book, you know.”

  “Ah, yes—er—which one?” inquired Beetham blandly.

  “Don’t be a fool, Carry,” said Eileen Enderby rather warmly. “Colonel Beetham has written many books. And he’s not going to be impressed by the fact that, knowing you were to meet him here to-night, you hastily ran through one of them.”

  “But it wasn’t hastily,” protested Enderby. “I gave it my best attention. The Life, I mean, you know. All your adventures—and by jove, they were thrilling. Of course, I can’t understand you, sir. For me, the cheery old whisky and soda in the comfortable chair by the warm fire. But you—how you do yearn for the desolate places, my word.”

  Beetham smiled. “It’s the white spots—the white spots on the map. They call to me. I—I long to walk there, where no man has walked before. It is an odd idea, isn’t it?”

  “Well, of course, getting home must be exciting,” Enderby admitted. “The Kings and the Presidents pinning decorations on you, and the great dinners, and the eulogies—”

  “Quite the most terrible part of it, I assure you,” said Beetham.

  “Nevertheless, I’d take it in preference to your jolly old deserts,” continued Enderby. “That time you were lost on the—er—the—”

  “The desert of Takla-makan,” finished Beetham. “I was in a bit of a jam, wasn’t I? But I wasn’t lost, my dear fellow. I had simply embarked on the crossing with insufficient water and supplies.”

  Mrs. Kirk spoke. “I was enthralled by that entry you quoted from your diary. What you thought was the last entry you would ever make. I know it by heart. ‘Halted on a high dune, where the camels fell exhausted. We examined the East through the field-glasses; mountains of sand in all directions; not a straw, no life. All, men as well as camels, are extremely weak. God help us.’”

  “But it wasn’t my last entry, you know,” Beetham reminded her. “The next night, in a dying condition, I crept along on my hands and knees until I reached a forest, the bed of a dry river—a pool. Water. I came out much better than I deserved.”

  “Pardon me if I make slight inquiry,” said Charlie Chan. “What of old superstition, Colonel? Mention was made of it by Marco Polo six hundred fifty years ago. When a traveler is moving across desert by night, he hears strange voices calling his name. In bewitched state, he follows ghostly voices to his early doom.”

  “It is quite obvious,” returned Beetham, “that I followed no voices. In fact, I heard none.”

  Eileen Enderby shuddered. “Well, I never could do it,” she said. “I’m frightfully afraid of the dark. It drives me almost insane with fear.”

  Sir Frederic Bruce looked at her keenly. For the first time in some moments he spoke. “I fancy many women are like that,” he said. He turned suddenly to Mrs. Kirk’s companion. “What has been your experience, Mrs. Tupper-Brock?”

  “I do not mind the dark,” said that lady, in a cool, even tone.

  “Miss Garland?” His piercing eyes turned on the actress.

  She seemed a little embarrassed. “Why—I—really, I much prefer the spotlight. No, I can’t say I fancy darkness.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Dawson Kirk. “Things are the same in the dark as in the light. I never minded it.”

  Beetham spoke slowly. “Why not ask the gentlemen, Sir Frederic? Fear of the dark is not alone a woman’s weakness. Were you to ask me, I should have to make a confession.”

  Sir Frederic turned on him in amazement. “You, Colonel?”

  Beetham nodded. “When I was a little shaver, my life was made miserable by my horror of the dark. Every evening when I was left alone in my room, I died a thousand deaths.”

  “By jove,” cried Enderby. “And yet you grew up to spend your life in the dark places of the world.”

  “You conquered that early fear, no doubt?” Sir Frederic suggested.

  Beetham shrugged. “Does one ever quite conquer a thing like that? But really—there is too much about me. Mr. Kirk has asked me to let you see, after dinner, some pictures I took last year in Tibet. I fear I shall bore you by becoming, as you Americans say, the whole show.”

  Again they chatted by two and two. Miss Morrow leaned over to Chan.

  “Imagine,” she said, “that picture of the great explorer, as a little boy, frightened of the dark. It’s quite the most charming and human thing I ever heard.”

  He nodded gravely, his eyes on Eileen Enderby. “The dark drives me almost insane with fear,” she had said. How dark it must have been that night in the hills outside Peshawar.

  After he had served coffee in the living-room, Paradise appeared with a white, glittering screen which, under the Colonel’s direction, he stood on a low table against a Flemish tapestry. Barry Kirk helped Beetham carry in from the hallway a heavy motion-picture projector and several boxes of films.

  “Lucky we didn’t overlook this,” the young man laughed. “A rather embarrassing thing for you if you had to go home without being invited to perform. Like the man who tried to slip away from an evening party with a harp that he hadn’t been asked to play.” The machine was finally ready, and the company took their places in comfortable chairs facing the screen.

  “We shall want, of course, complete darkness,” Beetham said. “Mr. Kirk, if you will be so kind—”

  “Surely.” Barry Kirk turned off the lights, and drew thick curtains over doors and windows. “Is it all right now?”

  “The light in the hallway,” Beetham suggested.

  Kirk also extinguished that. There was a moment of tense silence.

  “Heavens—this is creepy,” spoke Eileen Enderby out of the blackness. There was a slight note of hysteria in her voice.

  Beetham was placing a roll of film in the machine. “On the expedition I am about to describe,” he began, “we set out from Darjeeling. As you no doubt know, Darjeeling is a little hill station on the extreme northern frontier of India—”

  Sir Frederic interrupted. “You have been in India a great deal, Colonel?”

  “Frequently—between journeys—”

  “Ah yes—pardon me for breaking in—”

  “Not at all.” The film began to unwind. “These first pictures are of
Darjeeling, where I engaged my men, rounded up supplies, and—” The Colonel was off on his interesting but rather lengthy story.

  Time passed, and his voice droned on in the intense darkness. The air was thick with the smoke of cigarettes; now and then there was the stir of someone moving, walking about in the rear, occasionally a curtain parted at a window. But Colonel Beetham gave no heed. He was living again on the high plateau of Tibet; the old fervor to go on had returned; he trekked through snowy passes, leaving men and mules dead in the wasteland, fighting like a fanatic on toward his goal.

  A weird feeling of oppression settled down over Charlie Chan, a feeling he attributed to the thick atmosphere of the room. He rose and dodged guiltily out into the roof-top garden. Barry Kirk was standing there, a dim figure in the mist, smoking a cigarette. For it was misty now, the fog bell was tolling its warning, and the roof was wrapped in clouds.

  “Hello,” said Kirk in a low voice. “Want a bit of air, too, eh? I hope he’s not boring my poor guests to death. Exploring’s a big business now, and he’s trying to persuade grandmother to put up a lot of money for a little picnic he’s planning. An interesting man, isn’t he?”

  “Most interesting,” Chan admitted.

  “But a hard one,” added Kirk. “He leaves the dead behind with never so much as a look over his shoulder. I suppose that’s the scientific type of mind—what’s a few dead men when you’re wiping out one of those white spots on the map? However, it’s not my style. That’s my silly American sentimentality.”

  “It is undubitably the style of Colonel Beetham,” Chan returned. “I read same in his eyes.”

  He went back into the big living-room, and walked about in the rear. A slight sound in the hallway interested him, and he went out there. A man had just entered by the door that led to the floor below. Before he closed it the light outside fell on the blond hair of Carrick Enderby.

  “Just having a cigarette on the stairs,” he explained in a hoarse whisper. “Didn’t want to add any more smoke to the air in there. A bit thick, what?”

  He stole back into the living-room, and Chan, following, found a chair. A clatter of dishes sounded from the distant pantry, competing with the noise of the unwinding film and the steady stream of Beetham’s story. The tireless man was starting on a new reel.